World News Quick Take

Agencies

INDIA

Sexual deodorant ads pulled

Regulators have ordered television channels not to broadcast “overtly sexual” deodorant commercials that use females models in risque storylines, news reports said yesterday. Advertisements under the scanner include one in which a woman finds a man’s deodorant so attractive that she starts unbuttoning her blouse and another in which a woman is drawn to her sweet-smelling brother-in-law. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting announced a crackdown after it found the commercials violated advertising codes, the Financial Express newspaper reported. “The depiction and portrayal of women in these ads are overtly sexual,” the ministry said in a notice quoted by the newspaper. “The ads brim with messages aimed at tickling the libidinous male instincts and portrayal of women as lustily hankering after men.”

CHINA

Kim Jong-il visits IT firm

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visited an information technology firm in Beijing yesterday, resuming his economic fact-finding tour after an apparent summit with President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), South Korean media reported. Kim has been in the country for nearly a week, on what Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said was a trip aimed at studying Beijing’s dramatic economic development — and perhaps winning fresh assistance from his regime’s sole major ally. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the 69-year-old visited Shenzhou Shuma in Beijing’s Zhongguancun District — which is sometimes called “China’s Silicon Valley.” The report said Kim would head home later in the day.

AUSTRALIA

Asylum policy under fire

Canberra’s asylum seeker policy came under more fire yesterday, with the Human Rights Commission warning that suicide and depression were major concerns in the country’s detention centers. A new study focusing on the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney was released as criticism mounted of Canberra’s plan to send boatpeople to Malaysia, where detainees can be caned. Detention is mandatory for asylum seekers who arrive in Australia until their claims are processed, with some remaining locked up for more than a year. Canberra plans to send 800 boatpeople to Malaysia and in return will accept 4,000 people already assessed to be refugees from Malaysia for resettlement over four years. According to Amnesty International, Malaysia canes up to 6,000 detainees a year, claims seized on by critics yesterday.

INDIA

Plane crashes into house

Ten people were killed when a small plane carrying a patient to a hospital crashed into a house near New Delhi, police said yesterday. All seven people on board died, along with three women living in the house, when the single-propeller plane came down in a heavily populated neighborhood of Faridabad. The privately chartered plane was being used as an air ambulance to carry a young male patient on Wednesday night from the eastern city of Patna to a New Delhi hospital, local media reports said.

MALAYSIA

Police detain immigrants

Marine police say they have detained 105 illegal immigrants from Indonesia who were trying to sneak out of the country on a boat. Marine police official N. Kalai Chelvan says the 89 men and 16 women were caught early on Tuesday off southern Johor State after a 30-minute boat chase. He says the boat’s driver escaped by jumping into the sea.